Sparking Equity

Trump Ratchets Up Assault on Higher Ed

• Advancing Education Success Initiative

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Higher education in America stands at a critical juncture as unprecedented political attacks threaten to erode academic freedom, and upend longstanding relationships between the federal government and both private and public colleges and universities. In this urgent and timely conversation, hosted by Lande Ajose, former Skidmore College President Jamie Studley brings her perspective as a college administrator, Obama-era deputy undersecretary of education, and head of a major accreditation commission, to analyze what's happening behind  the headlines.

Studley makes a compelling case that America needs a range of educational pathways - not an either/or approach that pits vocational training against traditional degrees. The true measure of an equitable system, she argues, is whether all pathways remain accessible regardless of a student's background.

Perhaps most alarming are the encroachments on institutional autonomy, such as dictating to Columbia University how it should run one of its academic departments. 

Studley also offers measured hope. This crisis might accelerate innovations in educational delivery, transfer pathways between institutions, and help colleges better articulate their value. For higher education leaders seeking guidance in navigating this treacherous landscape, this conversation provides critical context and strategic considerations from one of the field's most experienced voices.


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Brought to you by the Advancing Education Success Initiative -- Coby McDonald, Producer; Louis Freedberg, Executive Producer and Correspondent

Lande Ajose :

Welcome to Sparking Equity, a podcast series focused on the best strategies to help students succeed. I'm Lande Ajose. Since our episode last month, attacks on higher education by the Trump administration have escalated dramatically. President Trump is threatening to cut billions of dollars in federal grants if university administrators don't submit to multiple demands that threaten to erode basic principles of academic freedom and free speech. Leading universities from coast to coast are letting go of researchers and imposing hiring freezes. The president has also signed an executive order to dismantle the US Department of Education. To dismantle the US Department of Education, it has already fired half of its 4,000-person workforce, and the president has ordered Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to move all its principal programs, including student aid, to other federal agencies. To boot, an unknown number of foreign students are being arrested by ICE agents on or off campus, sometimes by masked agents, and whisked away to detention facilities in Louisiana without any due process.

Lande Ajose :

To help us sort through what's happening and what college administrators should do to respond, we're pleased to have Jamienne Studley here with us today. She has served as president of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, new York. Associate dean at Yale Law School, as CEO of Public Advocates, a civil rights law firm, as Deputy Undersecretary of Education, overseeing higher ed in the Obama administration and most recently as the president of the WASC Senior College and University Commission. The commission is an international accrediting agency responsible for accrediting colleges and universities in California, Hawaii and internationally. Welcome Jamie.

Jamienne Studley:

Hello, it's great to be with you, Lande.

Lande Ajose :

So, jamie, you've served in all these roles. You have such a unique perspective on how the events we're seeing today are not only going to impact higher education policy, but also will impact students and institutions. And so I want to start with an issue with such broad reaching implications, and that is the closing of the US Department of Education, or at least the proposed closing. You know, in higher ed, the department's responsible for managing student loans for almost 40 million Americans, for administering the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or the FAFSA, for issuing Pell Grants to eligible students, and I'm wondering what you think the impact dismantling the department will have on higher ed and on students.

Jamienne Studley:

I'm glad you corrected that this is not a done deal simply because there's an executive order. This is still a matter for Congress and the American people still believe a majority of them that having a department that focuses on education at all levels is important for us as a nation. People haven't talked about this very much. It's become a very practical conversation about where could the different functions go. I think it's useful for us to take this up a step and think about the importance of having a secretary at the cabinet table who thinks about education. There should be somebody who thinks about the future.

Jamienne Studley:

It's not just a random set of structures and functions. Those could perhaps operate in different configurations. Structures and functions those could perhaps operate in different configurations. It's recognizing that education is a critically important function nationally. That said, there's a reason they were put together so that people who are thinking about education policy and directions could learn from and reinforce each other in an integrated, coordinated sort of way. I spent more of my career at the US Department of Education than any other single entity, and I was at HEW when education split off in 1980. I have tremendous respect for the people who work there and the dedication that they have brought to the task. So in that sense I'm really pained by the loss of all of that talent as well.

Lande Ajose :

At the same time, we know that one of the proposals that we have is let's break it up and let's send different aspects of the functions of that department to different parts of government. The most recent proposal is that the Small Business Administration would take responsibility for administering student loans. Is SBA the right place for administering what is $1.5 trillion in student loans?

Jamienne Studley:

There's a huge investment and there's a mix of functions that go with doing this.

Jamienne Studley:

There's the lending part of it the student aid programs and the options available for students that are designed to help people repay their loans in different ways based on their income.

Jamienne Studley:

The kind of work that they're doing is extremely complicated, so this is one of the an area where the loans themselves require more support for the individual borrowers. I can't really speak to whether SBA has the capacity. An easy answer might have been well, but the entire federal student aid office, the function that now does it, will move over, but it has been gutted by the recent eliminations of positions, so it will be hard for a shrunken SBA and a reduced FSA federal student aid to accomplish the tasks that are expected of it. I hope that Congress would really thoroughly think about it. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it needs to be thought through in a logical way, thinking about what it takes to manage the money, what it takes to support the students, what it takes to provide the assurance that the money is being used well and that people are asking how will this help people get through college and handle their loans afterward? And all of those are best done in a place that is thinking about the educational value and the student success to which you referred.

Lande Ajose :

What do we know about how the gutting of federal student aid is going to affect this upcoming class? Are students still going to be able to get the loans or the grants that they might be eligible for, given that there's so many fewer employees at the US Department of Education?

Jamienne Studley:

The US Department of Education does use outside entities to help manage the relationship of a student with its lender through the direct lending program, and those resources should still be available. A lot of what the department does is help explain the programs themselves, how to apply, how to use them, what students' options are, and I don't know whether the positions that are responsible for that kind of guidance were affected by this, but I understand that the cuts were deep and broader than people had hoped. They weren't surgical. They also included some areas where reduced staffing should actually affect both student information and processing and another important feature, which is making sure that the institutions where students attend school are carrying out their responsibilities, that they are doing what they are supposed to, so that money is used well. That kind of oversight was definitely reduced in the federal student aid employee reductions.

Lande Ajose :

So, in those employee reductions, what would you say to a student who needs now information on how to get their loans? Where should they go? In California, for example, the state is fortunate to have a student aid commission that's fairly robust. But if you're in another state, in a different part of this country, is there always a local entity that can take the place and assume some of those responsibilities that were previously held in the department?

Jamienne Studley:

The first point of contact for people who are already enrolled in school would be the financial aid office at their own institution and they will, with the help of their national organization of financial aid officers and the department, be doing the best that they can to organize that information and be up to date for students. Then there are students who've graduated, who are mostly in a repayment or need to take advantage of some of the flexibility in loan repayment. They may have a tougher time because for them the point of contact is either the department or the servicer. It's called the contracted entity that helps the department provide information about individuals' loans, information about individuals' loans.

Jamienne Studley:

If some of the provisions of repayment are changed, that makes it even harder for students and the changes can come from the department, they can come from Congress if they change the nature of the programs or the allowable flexibilities, and that could be very destabilizing for students. And a third place, it can also come from the courts, where some of the student aid programs that were developed or revised by the Biden administration are now being reviewed by the courts and asking students or their advisors to stay current on that is extremely difficult. But we know that participants in the public service loan forgiveness program are wondering whether there will be changes to that program, either widespread or specific to certain kinds of work. So that uncertainty is very, very difficult and it can affect the third and final group of students, which are the ones who haven't started yet, the people who are thinking about "can I go to school next year, what resources do I have and what would I need to get through a program run by the US Department of Education there?

Lande Ajose :

A number of reasons have been put forward in terms of why the administration has decided to dismantle the US Department of Education, and one of many is a Republican critique of four-year degrees and that perhaps there's been too much emphasis on that within American education. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts you mentioned the term earlier about post-secondary education. Should we be thinking about shorter-term certificates that are tied to the job market? Is that an area where we might get more bipartisan support for maintaining something like a US Department of Education?

Jamienne Studley:

There's no doubt that there is value overall to post-secondary education. I believe there is a very strong case to be made for traditional liberal arts education. But that's not the policy debate that we need to have right now. The relevant one is assuring opportunity for students of all ages and backgrounds to learn after high school in one of the many options available to us. It's not an either or question For me, and especially when we're talking under a banner of sparking equity. As long as what kind of education is available to a student isn't determined by his or her or their zip code or gender or first generation status or disability, we are better off if we have a wide range of different alternatives.

Jamienne Studley:

If we have a wide range of different alternatives, there's another way. It's not either. Or Lots of people are going to start with a credential or a certificate and then say I need more than that, or I want to shift over and do something different. They're going to get to a point in their work where they want the additional education, either in the field of their specialty, or they realize they want a more comprehensive bachelor's degree with the coherence and depth that that brings them. There are people who will go the other way They'll get a bachelor's degree and then want a certificate or a specialty.

Jamienne Studley:

I do think that the conversation is best had thinking about all of that breadth and that that helps us reach more people, because sense of the importance of learning past high school is extremely widespread. But one way I've asked this question is if you turn to people who say, well, not everybody needs to get a bachelor's degree. If you ask them what they want for their own children, if the answer is, "of course, I want them to have a bachelor's degree plus whatever additional skills they want to develop beyond that, I think that speaks pretty potently to our respect for that as the core of a base for resilience in life, leadership opportunities, community service and the breadth that will allow you to learn the new things for an unscripted future that are going to make the difference in whether people have options going forward. We have not made the case as well as we need to, or we have not made it as practically and audibly as we need to do going forward.

Lande Ajose :

So I want to take this down to the institutional level, because it seems like what is happening on college campuses in response to these changes in Washington DC are really important, and it seems to me that college presidents are approaching this a little bit from the perspective of every college for itself rather than kind of coming together as a group, and that that means that they feel quite vulnerable. And I'm curious, as a former college president, what you make of it. Is there a way for the presidents to kind of band together in some fashion to have their voices heard collectively, or are they too distinct to be able to do that?

Jamienne Studley:

Or is the reporting on what they say too limited and by that I mean general media that the critique is getting heard more vividly than the voices that have been there?

Jamienne Studley:

So you know, it's hard to know when you're in an intense conversation what people outside it can perceive. My sense is that many colleges have been trying to make the case about value-add, both broadly and specifically for their school. The American Council on Education launched, not just since the election, a national campaign to help people understand the way higher education builds America, and is doing it in a very comprehensive, many different kinds of learning from widely different kinds of institutions. But I agree with you that it doesn't feel like there is a linking of arms. I think it's coming. I think people are moving into a stage in which they understand the importance of being clearer and coordinated, and I wish I had an ultimate word to ask people to sign on to or a strategy for cutting through the anxiety and the din with clarity. But I sense that the need is evident and that we will see more of that soon. Colleges have always both competed and collaborated and I hope we'll see more of that.

Lande Ajose :

You know, I recently read in the New York Times that 2025 is a peak year for high school graduates, with roughly 3.9 million students expected to graduate in a few short months. Do you think that the situation we're in, and what many describe as a frontal attack on colleges, will have an impact on college enrollments this fall?

Jamienne Studley:

I am very concerned about the convergence of a number of different factors.

Jamienne Studley:

So you've mentioned what's been called the demographic cliff.

Jamienne Studley:

Although there are lots of people who do not have the credentials, the learning, the degrees, the post-secondary education that they want, who are available to us to populate our schools and programs, we are still working on how to make it possible for all the ones who want to come back to come back to understand what their choices are and to feel both welcomed and efficient in how they go about doing it.

Jamienne Studley:

There's going to be a lot of stress on families. This is not a specific education issue, but if a family is uncertain about whether their health care will be affected or they lose their jobs because of tariff-related effects or other economic effects, it may be hard to keep the family members who are in school in school, or imagine others starting the international issues and the population of students who choose to come to this country for the fine options that are available to them and the ones who may be precluded from coming by rules that are made by the government or fears that arise could also affect population in higher education, and the assault on the research enterprise and also the arts enterprise threatens grants from NIH to National Institutes of Health, to the National Endowment for the Arts. So it is a many layered threat to people's ability to go to college.

Lande Ajose :

Yeah, the assault on the research enterprise. I was thinking about that in terms of how it affects the number of doctoral or postdoctoral students that you might have who then become teaching assistants for undergraduate courses. So you know, one of the questions I'm like does that just shrink enrollment at some large major research institutions Like does that just shrink enrollment at some large major research institutions?

Jamienne Studley:

Well, we know that there are graduate offers of admission that have been closed down, there are labs that are closing down, that we're using graduate student expertise and, separately, that we're working on advances that are very important to us in health and many other fields. I don't want to be more optimistic than the moment deserves, but we all know the line about not letting a good crisis go to waste, acknowledging all of the really difficult things that are happening. If we can ask the questions right and say who do we really need to educate, what are the best ways to do that? There are some fair questions being asked of higher education.

Jamienne Studley:

Is it possible to transfer more? Can you teach people basic things more efficiently while maintaining the things that have to be done face-to-face or the supervision of a thesis that should be done by a small group of people? I'm not arguing for gigantic lectures by the professors who are left. I'm not arguing for gigantic lectures by the professors who are left. I'm certainly not saying that graduate students aren't an important part of both their own learning and the learning they provide to others, but if this accelerates some of the best thinking about how we can educate people and open the doors and help them complete and be more efficient about transferring learning from one institution or setting to another. That may be a way that we can find some hope in all of the otherwise very frightening and destructive things that are going on.

Lande Ajose :

You mentioned that one of the student populations that could be affected by this might be international students, and international student enrollment, and the arrest of a Turkish graduate student who's holding a valid visa could, in fact, have a chilling effect, and I'm wondering, with your legal hat on, if you can help us understand what civil rights protections exist for students in this environment.

Jamienne Studley:

Both students who are US citizens are holding valid visas, as well as international students who are here on student visas describe a set of important principled protections for people to have the right to a judge to determine whether they still meet the conditions of their green card or student visa or work visa or naturalized citizenship. Unfortunately, we're dealing with situations in which people are denied, seem to be denied, some of those important protections to actually speak to an immigration judge and lay out their case. I think the fear that is going to be engendered by how this was done and the choices that people have. There are lots of places that you can learn things and the American values of welcome and respect for multiple voices. If that's undermined, I think people may well think differently about where to pursue their graduate work. We've also seen one or two is not a trend, but highly visible professors choosing to leave the US to pursue their research and teaching elsewhere. Is not good for a country that has prided itself on the quality and hospitality of our precious educational institutions.

Lande Ajose :

Yes, and the numerous functions that they serve beyond just being in the classroom. We're talking with Jamie Studley, former president of Skidboard College, deputy undersecretary of education during the Obama administration and former president of the WASC Senior College and University Accrediting Commission. Jamie, I'd like to ask you a little bit about a case that's captured a lot of public attention, and that's the events at Columbia University, and I'd just be curious to know your reactions to what's been happening over the last couple of months at Columbia.

Jamienne Studley:

Pain, empathy, anxiety. It's really hard to judge. Someone who has a wider set of the facts and consequences, and the leadership at Columbia is, I project, making every effort to be thoughtful and responsible. It certainly seems like a target for a whole variety of reasons.

Jamienne Studley:

One of the most hair-raising stories I've read in the last few months and there have been many is the one in the New York Times about the fact that the $400 million is not a random number but appears to have arisen in a previous real estate transaction that the current president of the United States wanted to conduct with Colombia. He was frustrated in that and was not able to sell the property that he wanted to sell to Colombia. This is decades ago and it just feels like an example of a vendetta. It's a fair question how any institution can do a responsible job of allowing people to speak and have different views, while assuring that they can go to school and get the education that they came for and that they are doing so in a way that fits within free speech, but not danger, not threat and not, you know, unlawful interchange, and it's been really hard to sort that out for Columbia.

Lande Ajose :

Amongst the many of the administration's demands, one was to provide additional oversight to the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department, effectively but not technically placing them in some kind of academic receivership, and I'm curious if you have a sense of why that in particular is necessary or what the administration is calling for. That wouldn't have been covered in an accreditation process.

Jamienne Studley:

The request to do that or the insistence by the government that Columbia do that is an incursion on its responsibility to manage its academic programs do that is an incursion on its responsibility to manage its academic programs. It's rare even that an accreditor would get into an institution's management of a particular department. Accreditors look at the overall ability of the institution to govern itself. It looks at whether the conditions for student success and the outcomes are being achieved, whether the institution has the planning and leadership and staff resources to operate. It then leaves to the governing body and the leadership it has appointed to run the institution to carry out those objectives. Telling a college how to manage one particular department was, to my mind, a very unusual and frightening development.

Lande Ajose :

Final question, and it's about accreditation, because President Trump, during the campaign, took aim at accreditors and said that he would quote fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. Furthermore, Project 2025 referred to accreditors as an accreditation cartel. Can you talk a little bit about your sense of the administration's critique of accrediting agencies and how concerned should they be as kind of a subset of higher education institutions?

Jamienne Studley:

There are a few key critiques about accreditation. Some of them even are things that accreditors have been working on to assure that we're effective. Are all of the accredited institutions in the country really good enough? Do they deserve to be accredited? Accreditors have become more rigorous and demanding and are looking more thoughtfully and aggressively at outcomes, and I think that is shared purpose and it's a fair question. I think accreditors have moved a great deal in the direction of demanding improved outcomes, partly to demonstrate the value case and partly to demonstrate that accreditation is working hard. Hartley, to demonstrate that accreditation is working hard.

Jamienne Studley:

There's a critique that says that accreditation stifles innovation, whether that's moving too slowly to approve new programs that employers may be looking for or that only traditional kinds of colleges can be approved. I think that's just not true. It is not a barrier to innovation, but if there's a fair question to be asked, bring it on. Accreditors are balancing what it takes to be careful and approve only things that are good and strong and deserve taxpayer money through student aid and speed to allow innovation and change within the schools. The thousands of peer reviewers who participate in accreditation across the country unpaid, trained and rigorously overseen don't come from any one particular viewpoint or background. They're chosen because they understand the finances or the assessment systems or how to do education in the health profession or in the arts. That peer system brings in the kind of judgment we need to make the careful cases.

Jamienne Studley:

Should accreditors be worried? I believe yes. Ever since this drumbeat began, it's been likely that hard questions would be asked. Accreditors are perfectly capable and prepared to explain what they do, but we need a quality assurance mechanism. One of the great things about accreditation is that it is nonpartisan, independent, run by nonprofit organizations and, with the protective screens, that it's recognized, reviewed by the federal government and required to have the participation of public members, who bring that independence for higher education. I think there are good answers to the fair questions and accreditors will stand up for the importance of what we do.

Lande Ajose :

On that note, we need to bring this episode of Sparking Equity to a close. Jamie, I want to thank you so very, very much for being with us.

Jamienne Studley:

Thank you very much, Lande

Lande Ajose :

I want to thank our guest, Jamie Studley, who was the former president of Skidmore College, the former deputy undersecretary of education in the Obama administration and the former president of the WASC Senior College and University Commission. Our executive producer is Coby McDonald, our executive producer is Louis Freedberg, and I'd like to especially thank our sponsors, the Hewlett Foundation and School Services of California. Please subscribe to Sparking Equity. Wherever you get your podcasts, I am Lande Aj ose and thank you for listening. Thank you.

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Lande Ajose

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Pedro Noguera

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Louis Freedberg

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